Part 2

“A young man having, from the age of fifteen, abandoned himself to the practice of self-pollution, had, by the frequency of that act till the age of twenty-three, brought upon himself such a disorder of the head, and especially such a weakness in the eyes, that they particularly were seized with violent convulsions at the time of the seminal emission. If he attempted to read, he felt a dizziness somewhat like that of drunkenness. The _pupilla_ was extraordinarily dilated. He suffered extreme pains in the eye; his eyelids felt heavy, and glewed up every night; his eyes were always suffused with tears, and in the two corners of them, both very painful, there was constantly gathering a whitish matter. Though he ate his meals chearfully, he was reduced to extreme leanness, and as soon as he had eaten, he would fall into a kind of drunken stupor.”

The same author has preserved to us another observation on a case, of which he himself had been an ocular witness, and which deserves a place here. “A young man about eighteen years of age, having had an over-frequent intercourse with a servant-maid, fell all on a sudden into a great faintness, with a general tremor in all his limbs; his face flushed, and a very weak pulse. He was recovered out of this slate, in about an hour’s time, but he remained under a general languor. The same fit frequently returned, with an intolerable anguish, and in eight days time brought on a contraction and a tumor of the right arm, with a pain at his elbow, which redoubled at every fit. This disorder proceeded for some time augmenting, notwithstanding all the remedies that were used. However, M. Hoffman cured him at length[23].”

M. BOERHAAVE paints these disorders with that energy and exactness which characterise all his descriptions.

“An excessive profusion (says he) of the seminal humor produces lassitude, feebleness, immobility, convulsions, emaciation, desiccation, pains in the membranes of the brain; it obtunds the senses, and especially the sight; it brings on the _tabes dorsalis_, a general torpor, and various other diseases which have an affinity to those[24].”

It would not be right here to omit the observations which this great man communicated to his hearers, on his explaining this aphorism to them, and which turn upon the different means of evacuation.

“I have (says he) seen a patient, whose illness began by a languor and weakness all over his body, especially towards the loins; it was accompanied with such a motion of the tendons, such periodical convulsions, and wasting away, as were enough to destroy the whole body: he also felt a pain in the membranes of the brain, a pain which the patients call a dry burning heat, with which the noble parts are, in this case, continually affected.

“I have also seen a young man seized with a _tabes dorsalis_. He had been an extremely pretty figure, and though he had been often admonished against the over-indulgence of venery, he would still abandon himself to it, and became so deformed before his death, that all that muscular roundness, which appears over the spinal apophyses of the loins, was entirely sunk and flattened. In this case the brain seems to be consumed, and, in fact, the patients become stupid. The body loses all its suppleness to such a degree, that I never saw such immobility produced by any other cause. The eyes also contract a notable dimness, or difficulty of seeing[25].”

M. de SENAC, in his first edition of his Essays, set forth the dangers of self-pollution, and denounced to the victims of this infamy all the infirmities of the most languishing old age, in the flower of their youth. In the following editions may be seen his reasons for the suppression of this passage, and of some others.

Mr. LUDWIG, in his description of the evils attending over-abundant evacuations, does not forget the seminal one.

“The young (says he) of either sex, who abandon themselves to lasciviousness, ruin their health, by a dissipation of that strength which by nature was designed to bring their body to its greatest point of vigor. In short, they fall into a consumption[26].”

M. de GORTER enters into particulars of the most dreadful accidents deriving from this cause; but as it would be of too great a length to copy him, I refer to his work those who understand the language in which he wrote[27].

M. VAN SWIETEN, after a recital of the above-quoted description of the _tabes dorsalis_ by HIPPOCRATES, adds:

“I have seen all these symptoms, besides many more, befall those who had abandoned themselves to the infamy of self-pollutions. During three years, I employed, in vain, all the aids of the medical art, for a young man, who, by this vile habit, had brought on himself erratic, surprizing, and general pains, with a sensation sometimes of heat, sometimes of a very irksome cold all over his body, but especially towards the loins. These pains having, afterwards, been a little diminished, he felt so great a cold in his thighs and legs, although those parts seemed to the touch to have preserved their natural warmth, that he was continually warming himself at the fire, even during the greatest heats of the summer. But what more particularly astonished me, was a continual motion of rotation in the testicles, and the patient complained grievously of a like motion which he felt in his loins[28].”

This narration does not inform us whether this wretched object terminated his life at the end of the three years, or, what is worse, yet continued to languish on, for some time longer; for there could hardly be a third issue.

M. KLOEKOFF, in a very good work on those distempers of the mind which depend on the body, confirms, by his observations, what has been here advanced on this subject.

“Too great a dissipation of the seminal humor weakens the springs of action in all the solids; thence arise weakness, laziness, listlessness, hectics, the _tabes dorsalis_, a torpor, and depravation of the senses, stupidity, madness, epilepsies, convulsions[29].”

M. HOFFMAN had already remarked, that young people who abandoned themselves to that shameful practice of self-pollution, “lost, little by little, the faculties of the understanding, especially the memory, and became intirely unapt for study[30].”

M. LEWIS describes all these evils: but I shall only transcribe from his work, what relates to the detriment occasioned to the intellectual faculties.

“All the evils which arise from excesses committed with women, are also effected in early life, by that abominable practice in school-boys, a practice which I cannot describe in terms odious enough, _pollutio sui_, which, actuated more by vitiousness than by sense and reason, and ignorant of the mischievous consequences, they repeat, &c. &c.[31] ... So intimately are the mind and body blended together, that there cannot be any disease of the one which will not influence the other; but in none is the _mind_ more deeply affected than in this. To add to his infelicity, a melancholy gloom attends the patient, and silence and solitude are anxiously sought after.—The chearful haunts of men no longer delight him; he is absent in company, and will have no part of the conversation. He is not happy even in his friend: a sense of his misfortune, and perhaps the aggravating circumstance of having brought it upon himself, for ever hang on his mind. The company of the female sex he loves indeed, but the apprehensions that he may be cut off from nuptial felicity, interrupts the fruition of their pleasing converse. Thus deeply dejected, he excludes himself from society, wanders in retirement, and it is well if he seeks not to destroy himself at last[32].”

Fresh observations, subsequently introduced, will confirm the truth of the preceding dreadful description. That one furnished by M. STORCKE, in the valuable work which he has published on the history and cure of diseases, is not less terrible: but I refer the curious to the work itself, which no physician would wish to be without. The passage I allude to is in his _Medicus annuus_, T. ii. p. 215, &c. But before I terminate this Section, I shall here conclusively add a passage in that excellent work, with which M. GAUBIUS has lately enriched the medical art. He not only paints the evils, but points out the causes of them, with that force, that truth, that sagacity, that exactness, which can belong to none but so great a master. It is a most valuable extract; and that the coloring of it may appear in its true lustre, I subjoin to the translation the original of it, in the language of the author’s expression.

“An immoderate profusion of seed is pernicious, not only through the waste of that most useful humor, but also through the over-frequent repetition of that convulsive motion which is produced by the emission. For the highest pitch of that pleasure is immediately succeeded by so universal a relaxation of the animal strength, as cannot be borne often without a consequential enervity. The more frequent a draught there is on the secretory ducts of the body, the greater is the derivation of the respective humors of the secretions; so that in the case of the liquid being repeatedly attracted to the parts of generation, the rest of the secretions are depauperated: thence, from excesses of venery follow, weariness, weakness, immobility, a tottering gait, pains of the head, convulsions, a hebetation of all the senses, and especially of the sight, blindness, intellectual imbecillity, a feverish circulation, dryness, leanness, a phthisis, a _tabes dorsalis_, an effeminate habit of body. These evils are liable to augment and become incurable through that perpetual pruriency for venery which the mind does not less than the body at length contract; and from which it follows, that obscene imaginations haunt even the dreams of persons so affected, and that the parts prone to the libidinous turgescence are, on every occasion, impetuously sollicited, while the quantity of the repaired seminal fluid, were it never so small, occasions constantly a troublesome stimulation, and is ready to start from its relaxed repositories with any the least endeavour, or even without any endeavor at all. Whence it is clear why an excess of this nature is so capable of blasting the flower of youth[33].”

SECTION II.

_Observations communicated._

I shall preserve no other order than that of the dates of my receiving these observations.

“I have (says my illustrious friend M. ZIMMERMANN,) seen a man of twenty-three years of age, who became epileptic, after having weakened himself by frequent self-pollutions. As often as he had nocturnal pollutions, he fell into a complete fit of epilepsy. The same thing happened to him after any commission of that act, from which however he would not abstain, notwithstanding those consequences, and all the admonitions against it. Having, however, abstained from it for some time, I cured him of the nocturnal pollutions, and had even hopes of removing his epilepsy, of which the fits were already gone off. He had recovered his strength, his stomach, his sleep, and a very good color, after having looked like a corpse. But being returned to his acts of self-pollution, which were always followed by an attack of the epilepsy, he came at length to be taken with fits in the street, and he was found one morning dead in his chamber, fallen out of his bed, and bathed in his own blood.”

May I be allowed one question, which occurred to me when I read this observation? It is this: Can such as blow their brain out with a pistol, who drown themselves in a river, or cut their own throats, be accounted more guilty of self-murther than this man?

My friend adds, without entering into particulars, that he knows another who is in the same case: I have since learnt, that he ended his days in the same manner.

“I knew (says Mr. ZIMMERMANN) a man of great genius, and of almost universal knowledge, whom frequent pollutions had reduced to lose all the activity of his understanding, and whose body was exactly in the condition of the patient that consulted Boerhaave[34].”

Of this case I shall hereafter take notice.

I owe the two following facts to M. RAST, junior, an eminent Physician of Lions, with whom I had the pleasure of passing some months at Montpelier.

A young man at Montpelier, a student of physic, perished by his excesses in the practice of self-pollution. His imagination was so horror-struck, that he died in a sort of despair, fancying that he saw hell open, on the side of him, to receive him.

A child of that town, not above six or seven years old, taught, I believe, by a servant-maid, practised it so frequently; that a hectic fever coming on, soon cut him off. His fury of passion for this act was so great, that there was no hindering him to the very last days of his life. When it was represented to him that he was hastening his death, his comfort, he said, was, that he should the sooner rejoin his father, who was dead a few months before.

M. MIEG, a celebrated physician of Basil, well known in the literary world by some excellent dissertations, and to whom his country is obliged for his introduction of inoculation, of which he continues the practice with great ability and equal success, has communicated to me a letter of the Professor STEHELIN, a name ever dear to literature, in which I have found many interesting and useful observations. Some I reserve for properer places in the course of this work. Here I shall but subjoin two instances.

The son of M. ——, aged about fourteen or fifteen years, died of convulsions, and a kind of epilepsy, of which the original cause was self-pollution. In vain was he attended by the most experienced physicians of the town.

I also know a young lady of twelve or thirteen years old, who by this execrable practice has drawn upon herself a consumption, together with a timpanous abdomen, the _fluor albus_, and an incontinence of urine. Though medicines have alleviated her complaints, she is still but in a languishing condition, and I dread fatal consequences.

SECTION III.

_Descriptions taken from the book intitled ONANIA._

Since the publication of this work, I have learnt, from a very respectable quarter, that an entire faith ought not to be given to the English collection, and that this reason, together with certain calumnies, some obscenities, and the forgery of an imperial privilege, had made the German translation be prohibited in the Empire. These motives would have determined me to suppress all that I had extracted from that work, but some considerations have induced me to preserve it, under the modification of this præ-advertisement. The first is, that some of these reasons concern only the German edition. Another is, that though there may be some facts invented, as indeed some of them plainly enough appear to carry with them a stamp of falsity, it is yet proved, that the greatest number of them are but too true. In short, a third consideration which determined me, is what I find in the above-mentioned letter of M. STEHELIN. “I have (says he) received a letter from M. Hoffman of Maestrich, in which he acquaints me of his having seen a practiser of self-pollution, who had already drawn on himself a _tabes dorsalis_, which he had, without success, attempted to cure, and the patient was afterwards cured by the remedies of the _Onania_, of which Dr. BECKERS of London is supposeably the author, and so well cured, that he has recovered his corpulence, is strong and healthy, and has four children.”

The English book of _Onania_ is a perfect chaos, and the most indigested work that has been produced a long time. It is only the observations that can bear reading. All the reflections of the author, whom I could not believe a physician, are nothing but theological or moral trivialisms. I shall not extract from all this work, which is rather of the longest, any thing but a description of the most common accidents, of which the patients complain. The vivacity, the pathetic expressions of pain and repentance, which are found in a few of the letters in that book, I omit in this extract; but the want of them ought not to weaken the impression of horror which the reading of the facts themselves should inspire, as it is on the facts that the impression depends; and the readers will rather have to thank me for sparing him the perusal of a much greater number of others, without order or diction. I shall class under six heads those evils of which the English patients complain, and begin with the most grievous, those of the soul.

_First._ All the intellectual faculties are weakened; the memory fails; the ideas are confused or clouded; the patients sometimes even fall into a slight degree of insanity; they are continually under a kind of inward restlessness, and feel a constant anguish, with such pangs of confidence and remorse, as make them shed tears in bitterness of heart. They are subject to giddiness; all the senses, and especially those of seeing and hearing, grow weaker and weaker; their sleep, if sleep they can, is disturbed by disagreeable or frightful dreams.

2. The bodily strength entirely fails; the growth of those who have not done growing, and who abandon themselves to this detestable practice, is considerably checked. Some can get no sleep at all, others are in a state of continual dozing. All of them almost become hypochondriacs, or hysteric, and are overwhelmed with all the evils that attend those dreadful disorders; melancholy, sighs, tears, palpitations; suffocations, fainting fits. Some have been known to spit calcarious matter. Coughs, a slow fever, consumptions, are the punishments which some find in their own crimes.

3. The most acute pains are another subject of complaint in the patients. One complains of his head, another of his breast, the stomach, the intestines, aches of external rheumatisms; some are affected with an obtuse sensation of pain in all the parts of the body, on the slightest impression.

4. There are not only to be seen pimples on the face, which is one of the commonest symptoms, but even blotches, or suppurative pustules, on the face, nose, breast, thighs, with cruel itchings on those parts. Nay, one patient complained of fleshy excrescences on his forehead.

5. The organs of generation come in also for their share of the sufferings, of which they are themselves the primary cause. Many patients become incapable of erection; in others, the seminal humor comes away in the moment of the slightest stimulation, and of the weakest erection; some will even evacuate it on going to stool. Numbers are attacked with an habitual gonorrhœa, which intirely destroys constitutional vigor, and the matter of it resembles a fetid _sanies_, or foul mucosity. Others are tormented with painful priapisms. Dysuries, stranguries, heat of urine, a weakening of its spirt, put the patients to cruel inconveniences and pains. Some have very painful tumors in the testicles, in the penis, the bladder, the spermatic string. In short, either the impossibility of coition, or the depravation of the seminal humor, renders incapable of procreation almost all those who have long abandoned themselves to this crime.

6. The functions of the intestines are sometimes totally disordered, and some patients complain of an obstinate costiveness, others of the piles, or of the running of a fetid matter from the fundament.

This last observation reminds me of a young man, who, after every act of self-pollution, was attacked with a diarrhœa, which must be an additional cause of a diminution of strength to him.

SECTION IV.

_The Author’s Observations._

The object of description occurring in my first observation is dreadful; I was myself frighted at the first time of my seeing the unfortunate sufferer, who is the subject of it. Then it was that I felt, more than I had ever before done, the necessity of pointing put to young people, all the horrors of that precipice down which they voluntarily cast themselves.

L. D——, a watchmaker, had been clear of vice, and enjoyed a good state of health, till the age of seventeen, when he gave himself up to self-pollution, which he repeated every day, and often thrice a day, when the ejaculation was always preceded and accompanied by a slight fainting fit, or privation of the senses, and a convulsive motion of the exterior muscles of the head, which drew it strongly backward, while his neck swelled prodigiously. There had not passed a whole year, before he began to feel a great weakness after each act: this warning was not sufficient to draw him out of the mire. His soul, wholly ingrossed by the filth of this obscenity, was no longer capable of any other ideas, and the reiterations of his crime became every day more frequent, till he found himself in a condition, that gave him apprehensions of death. Sensible of his danger too late, the mischief had made too great a progress to admit of a cure. The parts of generation were become so irritable, and so weak, that there did not need any fresh act on the part of that wretched object, to make them let go the seed. The slightest irritation procured, instantly, an imperfect erection, which was immediately followed by an evacuation of that liquid, and this daily augmented his weakness. That convulsion, which before he was not used to experience but just at the time of the consummation of the act, and which ceased at the same time, was become habitual, and often attacked him without any apparent cause, with such violence too, that during the time of the fit, which sometimes lasted fifteen hours, and never less than eight, he suffered, in the nape of his neck, such violent pains, that commonly his outcries sounded like piteous howlings, and it was impossible for him, while the fit lasted, to swallow any thing whatever, liquid or solid. He had contracted a hoarseness of voice, but I did not observe it more so out of the fit than in it. He totally lost his strength. Incapable of every thing, overwhelmed with misery, he languished, almost without any assistence, for some months; being the more to be pitied, for that some remains of memory, which however it was not long till that was abolished, only served constantly to recall to him the causes of his wretchedness, and to augment to him the horrors of remorse. I was told his condition. I went to him, and found him less a living creature than a cadaverous figure, lying upon straw, meagre, pale, sallow, sending forth an infectious smell, and himself almost incapable of any motion. He bled at the nose a pale and watery blood, and was continually foaming at the mouth: attacked too with a diarrhœa, his excrements came from him without his perceiving it; the flux of his seed was continual; his eyes bleared, dim, or extinguished, had lost their faculty of motion; his pulse was extremely low, yet quick and frequent; his breathing very laborious, his leanness excessive, except just in his feet, which began to be œdematous. The disorder of his mind was not less than that of his body; without ideas, without memory, without reflections, without anxiety about his fate, without any other sensation but that of a pain which returned with every fit, at least once in three days. A being much below that of a brute; a sight, of which there is no conception can reach the horror. It was not easy to make out that he had ever belonged to the human species. I procured for him quickly enough the relief of destroying those violent convulsive fits, which recalled him to the power of feeling, only by the pain they brought with them; but satisfied with having mitigated his tortures, I discontinued remedies, which could have no efficacy on the main of his disorder. He died at the end of a few weeks, in June, 1757, œdematous all over his body.